Between the “Doctor-identifies-with-the-monster” plotline and his self-isolating move at the end, it was an emotionally exhausting hour watching “The God Complex.”
We find our characters in a labyrinthine hotel paired with a group of one-episode-only flunkies, The neat part of this episode is that the monster preys not on fear, like one would imagine, but instead on faith. Each victim’s undying faith was their undoing whether it was religion, conspiracy, enslavement or even Amy’s blind faith in the Doctor. The Doctor discovers he has to make Amy lose faith in him to save her life. She must see him as a selfish being who preyed on the innocent faith of a child so he wouldn’t have to be alone.
“An ancient creature drenched in the blood of the innocent. Drifting through space in an endless, shifting maze. For such a creature, death would be a gift. They’d accept it,” the Doctor says in such a self-loathing tone while standing over the dying minotaur, then adding, “I wasn’t talking about myself.”
I’ve been speculating a lot about different timelines this season. I try to pay extra attention to the clothes the Doctor is wearing (long coat, short coat, blue tie, red tie) and his general attitude (whimsical or weary) because I think these are the clues to where we are in the major arc and how the writers are going to get away with killing off our titular character in the first 10 minutes of the season.
I have reason to believe that because the Doctor knows his own death date, he’s got a lot less to lose and is no longer above meddling in his own timeline. We’ve had a lot of emphasis on paradox in the past few episodes and I wonder if they’re going somewhere with that.